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and supreme recognition from the state. Hidden men listened to
the cries of the victim, and thus learned the nature of the
death. It appears that the black suddenly broke into a fiery
rose, 'the only* luminous thing in Atlas', and a shooting forward
enclosed him. For some reason which was never even guessed the
Atla refused women. Those who had seen Atla were however useless
to instruct. They came forth from the Presence smiling, and even
under the most fearful tortures that the magicians could devise,
continued to smile. This smile never left them during life, and
the conscious superiority of it was so irritating, and so
contrary to the harmony of life in Atlas that the women were
killed, and their companions for the future forbidden to approach
the Atla.
Whatever theories as to its nature may have been formed by the
magicians were upset by a famous experiment. A most holy high
priest, a man who at puberty had insisted on immediate marriage
with all the women of his house, a magician who had formed four
new compounds of Zro, and discovered how to pass matter through
matter, was honoured by the great death. On reaching the last
corridor, where the concentrated spirals of Zro vapour whirled up
into the Presence of Atla, he bade farewell to the appointed
listeners in the manner suitable to his dignity, and then, taking
a last deep draught of Zro into his lungs, rushed into the
antrum. They heard him cry aloud "O!" with surprise, and then
with inexpressible rapture the words "Behind Atla, Otla!" which
were, and still are, completely unintelligible. Their surprise
was greater, when, seven days later he came striding past them
without greeting. He went to his 'house' and shut himself up, was
never seen or heard again, but was assuredly living at the time
of the 'catastrophe'. This man founded a school of philosophy, or
rather, it founded itself on what it supposed him to have
discovered; and this school disputes with the orthodox the credit
of the final success.
The lesser mysteries of the High House were concerned almost
entirely with the creation of life, and the bridging of the gulf
between Earth and Venus. These were connected intimately; the
theory was that if Atlantean brains could exist in bodies
sufficiently subtle to traverse aether, the task was done. Some
of the experiments were crude enough, and, to our minds,
horrible. They attempted to breed a new race by crossing with
snakes, swans, horses and other animals.* The Greek legends of
such monsters as Chimaera, Medusa, Lamia, Minotaur, the Centaurs,
the Satyrs and the like are mere filtrations of the Atlantean
tradition. The only theory behind such experiments was that they
were contrary to the natural order, and so worth trying. Men of
more scientific mind more plausibly passed Zro vapour through
sea-water; but they only created serpents of vast size, which
they cast into the sea about the High House as guardians. The
sea-serpent, whether legend or fact, is derived from this ex
periment. It is quite possible that some such survive. Another
school, objecting strongly to the sex-process, "which must be
transcended as the Lemurians overcame gemmation" vivisected men
and women, taking various parts of the brain, especially the
cerebellum, the pineal gland, and the pituitary body, and cul
tivated them in solutions of Zro under the invisible rays of
black phosphorus. The best results of this work was a race of
translucent jelly-folk of great intellectual development; but so
far from being able to travel through space, they could hardly
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